This week (20 January 2013) the thinktank Demos (“ideas and action to promote the common good”) has published its report Faithful Providers, which argues that faith-based organisations should be used more as public service providers. Simon Barrow offers an initial response, highlighting some of the problematic assumptions and stances within the report, setting out the background to successive government's interest in co-opting faith providers, and pointing towards a more radical Christian stance which roots service in a tradition of modelling and advocating a different social order based on justice and equality.

Bernadette Meaden reviews the book that many radical Christians have been waiting for. It shows, she says, how spirituality can be a unifying, liberating force, and how looking at the world from a Jesus perspective can be joyful and life-enhancing.

At the end of a recent speech to the Centre for Social Justice, John Cruddas MP made a rightful appeal for extended local democracy, says political theologian Graeme Smith. But he got there by caricaturing John Stuart Mill, mystifying Aristotle and elevating a confused communitarianism over the proper role of a democratic state in embedding social justice. This warmed-over Blue Labourism needs some serious questioning in terms of its historical understanding and political roots, he suggests.

Ruth Lister, who is a peer, emeritus professor of social policy at Loughborough University and chair of the Compass management committee, has written a fine, short piece for the Guardian on benefits and uprating.

Father Michael Rodrigo’s life and witness in Sri Lanka reflect the importance of perseverance, hope and faith in a better future, says Savi Hensman. This remarkable man still has something to say today, when all too many people live precariously in a divided and often violent world.

Among the most stimulating series of events at this year's Festival of Spirituality and Peace in Edinburgh will be the provocative 'Scottish Six' talks by broadcaster Lesley Riddoch and land reformer Andy Wightman.